Thoughts on books, reading and publishing from the staff and friends of the Tattered Cover Book Store.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Another King Is On The Shelves

SAM DOLAN is a young man coming to terms
with his life in the process and aftermath of making his first film. He
has a difficult relationship with his father, B-movie actor Booth
Dolan—a boisterous, opinionated, lying lothario whose screen legacy
falls somewhere between cult hero and pathetic. Allie, Sam’s dearly
departed mother, was a woman whose only fault, in Sam’s eyes, was her
eternal affection for his father. Also included in the cast of indelible
characters: a precocious, frequently violent half-sister; a
conspiracy-theorist second wife; an Internet-famous roommate; a
contractor who can’t stop expanding his house; a happy-go-lucky college
girlfriend and her husband, a retired Yankees catcher; the morose
producer of a true-crime show; and a slouching indie-film legend. Not to
mention a tragic sex monster.

Unraveling the tumultuous, decades-spanning story of the Dolan family’s friends, lovers, and adversaries, Double Featureis
about letting go of everything—regret, resentment, dignity, moving
pictures, the dead—and taking it again from the top. Against the
backdrop of indie filmmaking, college campus life, contemporary
Brooklyn, and upstate New York, Owen King’s epic debut novel combines
propulsive storytelling with mordant wit and brims with a deep
understanding of the trials of ambition and art, of relationships and
life, and of our attempts to survive it all.